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Posts Tagged: Peoples Bancorp of North Carolina Inc.

A fuel distribution firm in North Carolina lost more than $800,000 in a cyberheist earlier this month. Had the victim company or its bank detected the unauthorized activity sooner, the loss would have been far less. But both parties failed to notice the attackers coming and going for five days before being notified by a reporter.

Organized cyber thieves began siphoning cash from Mooresville, N.C. based J.T. Alexander & Son Inc. on the morning of May 1, sending money in sub-$5,000 and sub-$10,000 chunks to about a dozen “money mules,” people hired through work-at-home job scams to help the crooks launder the stolen money. The mules were paid via automated clearing house (ACH) payment batches that were deducted from J.T. Alexander’s payroll account.

The attackers would repeat this process five more times, sending stolen funds via ACH to more than 60 money mules. Some of those mules were recruited by an Eastern European crime gang in Ukraine and Russia that I like to call the “Backoffice Group.” This same group has been involved in nearly every other cyberheist I have written about over the past four years, including last month’s $1.03 million theft from a nonprofit hospital in Washington state.

David Alexander, J.T. Alexander & Son’s president, called the loss “pretty substantial” and “painful,” and said his firm was evaluating its options for recouping some of the loss. The company has just 15 employees that get paid by ACH payroll transactions every two weeks. At most, J.T. Alexander’s usual payroll batch is around $30,000. But in just five days, the thieves managed to steal more than a year’s worth of employee salaries.

The company may be able to recoup some of the loss through insurance: J.T. Alexander & Son Inc.’s policy with Employer’s Mutual Casualty Company (EMC) includes a component that covers cyber fraud losses, but the coverage amount is far less than what the victim firm lost.